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5/11/2020 The Surrealists'Publication: The Dance New York with Review the Yup'ik Mask | Gini Alhadeff | The New York Review of Books Date: June 3, 2018 5/11/2020TheAuthor: GiniSurr Alhadeffealists’ DanceThe Surrealists' with Dance the with Y theup’ik Yup'ik Mask | Gini Alhadeff | The New York Review of Books 5/11/2020 The Surrealists' Dance with the Yup'ik Mask | Gini Alhadeff | The New York Review of Books MaskThe Surrealists’ Dance with the Yup’ik The Surrealists’ GiniDance Alhadeff with the Yup’ik Mask Mask Gini Alhadeff At the Di Donna GallerieGinis on Alhadeff Madison Avenue, the masks At the Di Donna Galleries on Madison Avenue, the masks At the Di Donna Galleries on of the Yup’ik, an indigenous of the Yup’ik, an indigenous Madison Avenue, the masks people related to the Inuit, people related to the Inuit, of the Yup’ik, an indigenous seem to float off the dark seem to float off the dark people related to the Inuit, blue walls where they hang, blue walls where they hang, seem to float off the dark between paintings by Yves bebtlwuee ewna lplsa iwnhtienreg sth bey hYavnegs, Tanguy and André Masson, Tabnegtwueye na npda iAntinndgrsé b My Yavsseos n, Joan Miró and Enrico Donati, JoTaann gMuyir aón adn Adn Edrnér iMcoas Dsoonn, ati, Victor Brauner and Wolfgang ViJcotaonr MBirraóu annedr Eannrdic Wo Doolfngaatin,g Donald Ellis Gallery Paalen—all Surrealists, most PaVailcetnor— Barallu nSeurr arneda lWisotsl,f gmanogst Donald Ellis GYup’ikallery mask that once belonged to André Breton, from of whom fled wartiDmoneald Ellis Gallery Paalen—all Surrealists, most Yup’ik mask that once belonged to André Breton,Goodnews from Bay, Alaska, late nineteenth to early twentieth of whom fled wartime Yup’ikGoodnews maskE uthat rBayo oncep,e Alaska, ibelongedn the late 1 to9 nineteenthAndré40s f Broreton, N toe frearlywom twentieth century of whom fled wartime Europe in the 1940s for New Goodnews BayYo, rAlaska,k. Th latee c nineteenthoncenturynect itoo nearly twentieth Europe in the 1940s for New century between the Surrealists’ productions and the Yup’ik artefacts in YoYrokr.k .T Thhee ccoonnnecttiioonn the installation is never direct: they seem, rather, to have drifted bebtewtweeenn t hthee SSurreeaalliisststs’ ’p rpordoudcuticotnios nasn da nthde tYhuep Y’iku par’tiekf aacrttse ifnacts in together naturally. thteh ein isntsatallalattiioonn is nneevveer rd diriercetc: tt:h ethye sye esmee, mrat,h rear,t htoe rh,a tvoe hdarivftee d rifted totgoegtehtheer rn naattuurrally.. The first mask on entering, from Goodnews Bay, Alaska, which once belonged to André Breton, has one round eye, carved out, The first mask on entering, from Goodnews Bay, Alaska, which The first mask on entering, from Goodande wonse B slaayn,t eAdl, alsikkea a, nw ahlmicohnd set at an angle. The nostrils are once belonged to André Breton, has one round eye, carved out, once belonged to André Breton, has olnoep srioduedn;d o enye eis, cgararcveedd b oyu wt,hiskers, the other by a kind of and one slanted, like an almond set at an angle. The nostrils are and one slanted, like an almond set at eayne barnogwl.e A. T lihttele n woosotrdielsn afirseh is poised to jump into the mask’s lopsided; one is graced by whiskers, the other by a kind of mouth. Hands emerge from its temples. Nearby is a painting by loepyseibdreodw; .o An eli titsle g wraocoedden b fyis wh ihsi spkoeisresd, toh eju omthp einr tboy th ae kmiansdk ’osf Joan Miró—Peinture, (La Sirène) (1927)—in which a flowing eymebourothw. .H Aan ldist telem wergoeo dfreonm f iitssh t eims ploeiss. eNde taorb jyu ims pa pinaitnot itnhge b my ask’s curvy figure consists of splotches of color, suggesting an arm or mJoouatnh M. Hiraón—dPs eeimntuereg,e ( Lfrao Smir èitnse )t e(m19p2l7e)s—. Nine wahrbicyh ias falo pwaiinngting by the tail of a siren, with a little fish poised over its face. Jocaunr vMy fiirgóu—re Pcoeninsitsutrse o,f ( sLpalo Stcihreèsn eo)f c(o1l9o2r,7 s)u—ggiens twinhgi acnh aar mfl oowr ing cutrhvey ta fiilg ouf rae sciroenns, iwstisth o af lsitptlleo ftcishhe pso oisfe cdTo ohlvoeer rm, isatuss kgfasg caeers.et imngad aen o af rdmrif otwrood, from villages placed at the mouths of enormous rivers—the Yukon and Kuskokwim—in an thTe htea iml aosfk as asriere mna, dwei othf dar ilfittwtloeo fdi,s hfr opmo ivsieldla goevse prl aitcse dfa acte t.he arctic landscape with no trees. Spring flooding brought down mouths of enormous rivers—the Yukon and Kuskokwim—in an The masks are made of driftwood, frolmar gvei ltlraugneks , pmlaocsteldy caet dtahre and fir, from the interior. “The mask arctic landscape with no trees. Spring flooding brought down was put on the dancer,” said Donald Ellis, who co-curated the mloaurgthe str ounf kesn, omromstolyu sc erdivare rasn—d ftihr,e f rYoumk tohne ianntedr iKoru. s“kTohke wmiamsk—in an show with Emmanuel Di Donna, “and as the dancer began to arwctaisc plaunt odns cthaep ed awncitehr, ”n osa tidre Deso.n Salpdr Einllgis f, lwoohod icnog-c buraotuegd htht edown sing and dance, it was activated and became a conduit between lasrghoew tr wunitkhs E, mmmoasntluye lc Dedi aDr oannnda , f“iar,n fdr oasm th teh dea inncteerr iboerg.a “nT tohe mask the physical and the spiritual world.” The masks often have arms wsaisn gp uant do nd atnhcee ,d iat nwcaesr ,a”c tsivaaidte dD aonnda blde cEamllies ,a wcohnod uciot -bceutwraeteend the and hands, but never thumbs, so that the conduit would not be the physical and the spiritual world.” The masks often have arms show with Emmanuel Di Donna, “anda balse tthoe h doladn bcaecrk b tehgea snp itroit summoned by the mask and traveling and hands, but never thumbs, so that the conduit would not be sing and dance, it was activated and boeuctawmaerd a i nctoon tdheu iwt obreldtw. Meeanny of the masks have a plate on the able to hold back the spirit summoned by the mask and traveling the physical and the spiritual world.” Tinhsied em faosrk ths eo dftaennc ehr atov eb iater msos that the mask would appear to outward into the world. Many of the masks have a plate on the float in front of the face. In fact, the Yup’ik term for mask anidns hidaen fdosr, tbheu td annecveerr t oth buitme bsos ,t hsaot thea tm thasek cwoonudlud iat pwpeoaurl tdo not be translates to “face in front of the face,” or floating face. It took abflleo atto i nh ofrlodn tb oafc tkh eth fea csep. iIrni tf ascutm, thmeo Ynuepd’ ibk yte trhme fmora mska saknd traveling extraordinary skill to dance with a large mask held between the outrtawnaslradt eisn too “tfhaec ew ino rflrdo.n tM oaf nthye ofafc teh,”e omr aflsokasti nhga vfaec ea. pItl atoteo kon the teeth. The ceremonial dances took place in the qasgiq, or inesxidtrea ofrodri ntharey dsaknillc etor dtoan bciet ew sitoh tah laatr gteh em masaks hke lwd obuetlwd eaepnp tehaer to “communal men’s house”—darkened spaces lit by whale-oil floteaett hin. Tfhroe ncte roefm tohnei afla dcaen. cIens ftaocotk, pthlaec eY iunp t’hiek qtaesrgmiq f, oorr mask lamps in shallow stone bowls. tra“ncosmlamteusn taol “mfeanc’es hino ufsreo”n—t odfa rtkheen efda csep,a”c eosr lfitl obayt iwnhga lfea-coeil. It took exltarmaopsr dinin sahrayll oskwi lslt oton ed baonwcles .with a largAen mdréa sBkr ehteolnd a bnde tMwaene nR athye had first seen Yup’ik masks teAetnhd. rTé hBer ectoenre amndo nMiaaln dRaanyces took place in the qasgiq, or in 1935 in Paris at the Galerie “choamd mfirustn saele mn Yenup’s’ ihk omuassek”s—darkened spaces lit by whale-oil Charles Ratton in Paris. But in 1935 in Paris at the Galerie lamps in shallow stone bowls. it was Max Ernst who Charles Ratton in Paris. But introduced his friends to a Aint dwréas B Mreatxo Enr nasntd w Mhoan Ray trove of them in Manhattan. introduced his friends to a had first seen Yup’ik masks He was walking down Third trove of them in Manhattan. in 1935 in Paris at the Galerie Avenue one day when he He was walking down Third Charles Ratton in Paris. But spotted a spoon from the Avenue one day when he it was Max Ernst who Northwest Coast in the spotted a spoon from the window of Julius Carlebach’s inNtrordthuwceedst hCiosa fsrti ienn tdhse to a antiques shop. Ernst’s wife, trowvined oofw t hoef mJu liinu sM Carnlhebaattcahn’s. the painter Dorothea Haen wtiqause ws sahlokpin. gE rdnostw’sn w Tifhe,ird Tanning, told the story: Ernst Avtheen puaei notenre D doaryo twhehaen he went in to ask about the spToatntendin ag , stpooldo tnh ef rsotomry t: hEernst Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, spoon and, when he Paris went in to ask about the Northwest Coast in the Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, https://wwwsp.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/oon and, when he Paris 1/6 window of Julius Carlebach’s https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/antiques shop. Ernst’s wife, 1/6 the painter Dorothea Tanning, told the story: Ernst

went in to ask about the Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, spoon and, when he Paris https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/ 1/6 5/11/2020 The Surrealists' Dance with the Yup'ik Mask | Gini Alhadeff | The New York Review of Books The Surrealists’ Dance with the Yup’ik Mask Gini Alhadeff

At the Di Donna Galleries on Madison Avenue, the masks of the Yup’ik, an indigenous people related to the Inuit, seem to float off the dark blue walls where they hang, between paintings by Yves Tanguy and André Masson, Joan Miró and Enrico Donati, Victor Brauner and Wolfgang Paalen—all Surrealists, most Donald Ellis Gallery Yup’ik mask that once belonged to André Breton, from of whom fled wartime Goodnews Bay, Alaska, late nineteenth to early twentieth Europe in the 1940s for New century York. The connection between the Surrealists’ productions and the Yup’ik artefacts in the installation is never direct: they seem, rather, to have drifted together naturally.

The first mask on entering, from Goodnews Bay, Alaska, which once belonged to André Breton, has one round eye, carved out, and one slanted, like an almond set at an angle. The nostrils are lopsided; one is graced by whiskers, the other by a kind of eyebrow. A little wooden fish is poised to jump into the mask’s mouth. Hands emerge from its temples. Nearby is a painting by The New York Review, p.2 Joan Miró—Peinture, (La Sirène) (1927)—in which a flowing curvy figure consists of splotches of color, suggesting an arm or the tail of a siren, with a little fish poised over its face.

The masks are made of driftwood, from villages placed at the mouths of enormous rivers—the Yukon and Kuskokwim—in an arctic landscape with no trees. Spring flooding brought down large trunks, mostly cedar and fir, from the interior. “The mask was put on the dancer,” said Donald Ellis, who co-curated the show with Emmanuel Di Donna, “and as the dancer began to sing and dance, it was activated and became a conduit between the physical and the spiritual world.” The masks often have arms and hands, but never thumbs, so that the conduit would not be able to hold back the spirit summoned by the mask and traveling outward into the world. Many of the masks have a plate on the inside for the dancer to bite so that the mask would appear to float in front of the face. In fact, the Yup’ik term for mask translates to “face in front of the face,” or floating face. It took extraordinary skill to dance with a large mask held between the teeth. The ceremonial dances took place in the qasgiq, or “communal men’s house”—darkened spaces lit by whale-oil lamps in shallow stone bowls.

André Breton and Man Ray had first seen Yup’ik masks in 1935 in Paris at the Galerie Charles Ratton in Paris. But it was Max Ernst who introduced his friends to a trove of them in Manhattan. He was walking down Third Avenue one day when he spotted a spoon from the Northwest Coast in the window of Julius Carlebach’s antiques shop. Ernst’s wife, the painter Dorothea Tanning, told the story: Ernst

The first mask on entering, from Goodnews Bay, Alaska, which once belonged to André Breton, has one round eye, carved out, and one slanted, like an almond set at an angle. The nostrils are lopsided; one is graced by whiskers, the other by a kind of eyebrow. A little wooden fish is poised to jump into the mask’s mouth. Hands emerge from its temples. Nearby is a painting by Joan Miró—Peinture, (La Sirène) (1927)—in which a flowing curvy figure consists of splotches of color, suggesting an arm or the tail of a siren, with a little fish poised over its face.

The masks are made of driftwood, from villages placed at the mouths of enormous rivers—the Yukon and Kuskokwim—in an arctic landscape with no trees. Spring flooding brought down large trunks, mostly cedar and fir, from the interior. “The mask was put on the dancer,” said Donald Ellis, who co-curated the show with Emmanuel Di Donna, “and as the dancer began to sing and dance, it was activated and became a conduit between the physical and the spiritual world.” The masks often have arms and hands, but never thumbs, so that the conduit would not be able to hold back the spirit summoned by the mask and traveling outward into the world. Many of the masks have a plate on the inside for the dancer to bite so that the mask would appear to float in front of the face. In fact, the Yup’ik term for mask translates to “face in front of the face,” or floating face. It took extraordinary skill to dance with a large mask held between the The New York Review, p.3 teeth. The ceremonial dances took place in the qasgiq, or “communal men’s house”—darkened spaces lit by whale-oil lamps in shallow stone bowls.

went in to ask about the Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, 5/11/2020 The Surrealists'spoon and Dance, when with he the Yup'ik Mask | Gini AlhadeffP |a rTheis New York Review of Books Joan Miró: Peinture, (La Sirène), 1927 https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/discovered that it was part of 1/6 a collection of spoons, bought them all from Carlebach. At the time, the Heye Foundation, which had opened the Museum of the American Indian, at Broadway and 155th Street in Washington Heights, in 1922 (now part of the Smithsonian Institution), was having financial difficulties and had decided to deaccession a group of beautiful Yup’ik masks. The masks were sometimes made in multiples, for the multiple participants in ceremonial dances, and George Gustav Heye had collected them that way. Twenty years later, the curatorial staff decided they didn’t need to keep more than one of each.

A man called A.H. Twitchell, an amateur ethnologist with a trading post on the Kuskokwim River in Alaska, had originally acquired many of those masks, and among those who collected them he was the one of the few who had thought of recording the names of the masks and their meaning. He had sold some fifty-five of them to Heye. Out of these, about half were deaccessioned in the 1940s through Carlebach, and almost all, thanks to Ernst’s discovery of his antiques store, went to Surrealists.

The Surrealist painter Enrico Donati recalled that they would pile into a convertible with what he called “a box of beer”—Man Ray, Ernst, Carlebach, and Donati himself—and go up to a warehouse in the Bronx where the pieces were kept. According to Ellis, the Donati family has a John Bigelow Taylor/Donald Ellis Gallery photograph by Man Ray of Yup’ik mask from the Kuskokwim River region, Alaska, Carlebach, Donati, and Ernst circa 1880 in authentic Indian costumes from the warehouse. Donati slept beneath one of the masks and kept another at his studio. Like Breton, who adopted Donati into the Surrealist circle when they met in New York City, Donati believed it acted on his psyche through his dreams. Also devoted to collecting these artefacts were the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the artists Roberto Matta, Georges Duthuit, Isabelle Waldberg, and Robert Lebel, who made some stylized drawings of the masks. Collecting, according to Marie Mauzé in her catalogue essay, “The Yup’ik World and the Surrealists,” was a “means of combating feelings of isolation… for exiles who felt uneasy in North America.”

Freud had opened the way to thinking about the irrational. But just as Picasso’s “primitivism” wasn’t merely esthetic— primitivist objects seemed to contain a kind of power that was renewing all of Western representation—so, too, the Surrealists, like the Renaissance art historian Aby Warburg in his personal immersion in the Serpent rituals of the South-Western Pueblos, were keenly interested in a contact with a spirituality that did not shy away from the mysteries of physical life—through dreams, rituals, trances, magical and religious thinking—or from the paranormal intuitions of schizophrenics. They were drawn to all the ways that conscience might be transformed, and so in shamanism and the taking on of different identities, such as those of animals, through rituals that enacted these identifications with the realm of the dead and of the non-human, or in forms bordering on paranoia. Claude Lévi-Strauss was still young but anthropology, notably in the writings of his master Marcel Mauss, as well as Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris, was clearly the new philosophical discipline. This is how the Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, living in Mexico City in https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/ 2/6 5/11/2020 The Surrealists' Dance with the Yup'ik Mask | Gini Alhadeff | The New York Review of Books discovered that it was part of Joan Miró: Peinture, (La Sirène), 1927 a collection of spoons, bought them all from Carlebach. At the time, the Heye Foundation, which had opened the Museum of the American Indian, at Broadway and 155th Street in Washington Heights, in 1922 (now part of the Smithsonian Institution), was having financial difficulties and had decided to deaccession a group of beautiful Yup’ik masks. The masks were sometimes made in multiples, for the multiple participants in ceremonial dances, and The New York Review, p.4 George Gustav Heye had collected them that way. Twenty years later, the curatorial staff decided they didn’t need to keep more than one of each.

Freud had opened the way to thinking about the irrational. But just as Picasso’s “primitivism” wasn’t merely esthetic— primitivist objects seemed to contain a kind of power that was renewing all of Western representation—so, too, the Surrealists, like the Renaissance art historian Aby Warburg in his personal immersion in the Serpent rituals of the South-Western Pueblos, were keenly interested in a contact with a spirituality that did not shy away from the mysteries of physical life—through dreams, rituals, trances, magical and religious thinking—or from the paranormal intuitions of schizophrenics. They were drawn to all the ways that conscience might be transformed, and so in shamanism and the taking on of different identities, such as those of animals, through rituals that enacted these identifications with the realm of the dead and of the non-human, or in forms bordering on paranoia. Claude Lévi-Strauss was still young but anthropology, notably in the writings of his master Marcel Mauss, as well as Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris, was clearly the new philosophical discipline. This is how the Surrealist painter Leonora Carrington, living in Mexico City in https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/ 2/6 5/11/2020 The Surrealists' Dance with the Yup'ik Mask | Gini Alhadeff | The New York Review of Books discovered that it was part of Joan Miró: Peinture, (La Sirène), 1927 a collection of spoons, bought them all from Carlebach. At the time, the Heye Foundation, which had opened the Museum of the American Indian, at Broadway and 155th Street in Washington Heights, in 1922 (now part of the Smithsonian Institution), was having financial difficulties and had decided to deaccession a group of beautiful Yup’ik masks. The masks were sometimes made in multiples, for the multiple participants in ceremonial dances, and George Gustav Heye had collected them that way. Twenty years later, the curatorial staff decided they didn’t need to keep more than one of each.

The Surrealist painter Enrico Donati recalled that they would pile into a convertible with what he called “a box of beer”—Man Ray, Ernst, Carlebach, and Donati himself—and go up to a warehouse in the Bronx where the pieces were kept. According to Ellis, the Donati family has a John Bigelow Taylor/Donald Ellis Gallery photograph by Man Ray of Yup’ik mask from the Kuskokwim River region, Alaska, Carlebach, Donati, and Ernst circa 1880 in authentic Indian costumes from the warehouse. Donati slept beneath one of the masks and kept another at his studio. TheLik Newe B Yorkret oReview,n, wh p.5o adopted Donati into the Surrealist circle when they met in New York City, Donati believed it acted on his psyche through his dreams. Also devoted to collecting these artefacts were the anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, and the artists Roberto Matta, Georges Duthuit, Isabelle Waldberg, and Robert Lebel, who made some stylized drawings of the masks. Collecting, according to Marie Mauzé in her catalogue essay, “The Yup’ik World and the Surrealists,” was a “means of combating feelings of isolation… for exiles who felt uneasy in North America.”

Freud had opened the way to thinking about the irrational. But just as Picasso’s “primitivism” wasn’t merely esthetic— primitivist objects seemed to contain a kind of power that was renewing all of Western representation—so, too, the Surrealists, like the Renaissance art historian Aby Warburg in his personal immersion in the Serpent rituals of the South-Western Pueblos, were keenly interested in a contact with a spirituality that did not shy away from the mysteries of physical life—through dreams, rituals, trances, magical and religious thinking—or from the paranormal intuitions of schizophrenics. They were drawn to all the ways that conscience might be transformed, and so in shamanism and the taking on of different identities, such as those of animals, through rituals that enacted these identifications with the realm of the dead and of the non-human, or in forms bordering on paranoia. Claude Lévi-Strauss was still young but anthropology, notably in the writings of his master Marcel Mauss, as well as Georges Bataille and Michel Leiris, was clearly the new philosophical discipline. This is how the 5/11/2020 The Surrealists'Surrealist Dancepainte rwith Leo theno rYaup'ik Carr Maskingto n| ,Gini livi nAlhadefg in Mfe x| Theico CNewity iYnork Review of Books her eighties, told me she saw the kindly woman who took care of https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/her infirm husband: “I feel as though I were on a raft being 2/6 pursued by a crocodile and that I must throw bits of food at it so it won’t eat me.” She was appeasing a dangerous beast. The Yup’ik danced as an offering and an entreaty to the animals they would hunt.

 

Donald Ellis Gallery Yup'ik South Wind or Complex Mask, from the village of Napaskiak, Kuskokwim River region, Alaska, 1890–1905

Ellis began to collect Native American art when he was seven, and started tracking down Yup’ik artefacts in the hands of Surrealists, or their heirs, thirty years ago. In the process, he found a lifelong friend in Donati, who lived to be ninety-nine and told him more than once, “Donald, the minute they shut the door on the hearse, the masks are yours!”

One of those very masks was the South Wind or Complex Mask, of which Ellis said:

The Yup’ik lived in the harshest conditions. Everybody would have been touched by starvation at some point. If they failed to catch a whale in season they would have a very difficult winter. The long thin sticks represent rain, and the wind is represented by the tube. The Yup’ik danced to appease animal spirits. In the dance they summoned the south wind because when the wind moved from north to south it meant the coming of spring, when the ice broke and the whales returned.

Donati apparently believed that his South Wind mask watched him work. It surprised him, when he visited younger painters’ studios in Brooklyn, to see nothing but canvas and paint, so different from the Surrealists’ studios, which were like wunderkammer, with fossils and rocks, and tribal arts—“objects of inspiration,” as Donati called them. “It’s not so much about the way that the artists looked at the masks, but about the way the masks looked at the paintings,” Ellis says.

Miró’s Tête et oiseau, conceived in

1981, and one of the largest Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New sculptures in the show, rests on two York/ADAGP, Paris rough wooden blocks. A dry Joan Miró: Tête et oiseau, 1981; click to enlarge pumpkin shell with a long, bent nose, and no other facial features, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/ 3/6 5/11/2020 The Surrealists' Dance with the Yup'ik Mask | Gini Alhadeff | The New York Review of Books her eighties, told me she saw the kindly woman who took care of her infirm husband: “I feel as though I were on a raft being 5/11/2020 The Surrealists'pursued b yDance a cro withcodi lthee a nYdup'ik tha tMask I mu s| tGini thro Alhadefw bits of f| fTheood New at it Ysoork Review of Books 5/11/2020 The Surrealists' Dance with the Yup'ik Mask | Gini Alhadeff | The New York Review of Books Thehite wr New eoing ’Yorkht tei eaReview,st ,m toel. dp.6” mShee s whea ss aawpp tehaes iknign dal yd awnogmeraonu sw bheoa stot.o Tkh ceare of her eighties, told me she saw the kindly woman who took care of hYeurp i’nikfi rdman hcuesdb aasn dan: “oIf fereiln ags atnhdo uagnh e In wtreearety o tno ath rea fatn bimeinalgs they wouldh ehru intf.irm husband: “I feel as though I were on a raft being pursupeudr sbuye da bcyro ac cordoicleo dainled a tnhda t hIa mt Iu mstu tsht rtohwro wb ibtsit so fo f ofoodd a at ti itt ssoo it wonit’ tw eoant’ tm eea.t” m Seh.”e Swhaes w aapsp aepapseinasgi nag d aa dnagnegreoruosu sb ebaesats.t .T Thhee Yup’iYku dpa’nikc eddan acse da na so afnfe orifnfegr ianngd a nadn aenn ternetaretya ttyo t oth teh ea nanimimaalsls t thheeyy wouldw houlndt .hunt.     

Donald Ellis Gallery Yup'ik South Wind or Complex Mask, from the village of Napaskiak, Kuskokwim River region, Alaska, 1890–1905

Donald Ellis Gallery Yup'ik South Wind or Complex Mask, from the village of Napaskiak, Kuskokwim River region, Alaska, 1890–1905 Donald Ellis Gallery Yup'ik South Wind or Complex Mask, from the village of Napaskiak, Kuskokwim River region, Alaska, 1890–1905 Ellis began to collect Native American art when he was seven, and started tracking down Yup’ik artefacts in the hands of Ellis began to collect Native American art when he was seven, Surrealists, or their heirs, thirty years ago. In the process, he and started tracking down Yup’ik artefacts in the hands of found a lifelong friend in Donati, who lived to be ninety-nine Ellis bSeugrraena ltiost sc,o olrle tchte iNr ahteiivrse, Athmirteyr iyceaanrs a argt ow. hIne nth he ep rwoacess sse, vhen, and stotfaoldrut nehdim atr lamicfeoklrionen ggt h dfaroniew nondn cYineu ,Dp “’oDinkoa atnir,at lwedfh,a octh tlseiv imend it nthoue tb ehe a tnhniednyse tosyhf-nuitn tehe Sdouorrre oanlid st thtsoe,l doh reh atimhrse eimr, othhreeei rtmhs,a antsh koirnst cyae r,ye “e yDaorosun rasgl!do”, .t hIne mthien uptreo tcheesys ,s huet the door on the hearse, the masks are yours!” Ofonuen do fa t hliofesleo vnegr yfr imenadsk isn wDaosn tahtei, Swohuot hl iWveidn dto o br eC noimneptlye-xn iMneask, and told him more than once, “Donald, the minute they shut the of whOicnhe Eofll tihs ossaei dv:ery masks was the South Wind or Complex Mask, door onf wthheic hhe Ealrlsies ,s tahide: masks are yours!” The Yup’ik lived in the harshest conditions. Everybody Onwe oouf ltdTh hohesa evY euv peb’reiyke nmli vtaoesudk csihn w etdha esb htyha esrst ahSreovsuta tcthioo nWnd iatnti odsn oosmr. ECev opemoryipnbltoe.d xIyf Mask, of twhheyic fhwa oEiluelldids t hosaa vcieda t:bcehe na twouhcahle di nb ys esatasrovna ttihoeny a tw sooumled phoaivnet. aIf very dthieffyi cfuaillte wd iton tceart.c Thh ae w lohnalge tihni sne astsiocnk sth reeyp wreosuelndt hraavine ,a The Yvuepry’ idki flfiivceudlt iwni nthteer .h Tahrseh leosntg c tohnind isttiiocnks .r eEpvresryenbto rdayin, and the wind is represented by the tube. The Yup’ik danced wouldan hda tvhee bweiennd tios urecphreedse bnyte dst abryv tahteio tunb aet. sTohme eY uppo’iinkt .d aIfnced to appease animal spirits. In the dance they summoned the they ftaoi alepdp etaos ec aatncihm aa lw sphiarlites .i nIn s tehaes odann tchee tyh ewyo suulmd mhaovned a the vsoeuryth ds woifufitnihcd uw bliten wcda ibnuetsceear .uw Tsheh ewen h ltoehne g twh tehi nwindi nsmdti ocmvkoesv dre efdpr ofrremosme nn ont orrtrahtih nt ot,o saonudt hths ioetu wmthie niatd nm ti set ahrnetp ctrhoeems ecinontmge dion fgb ysop ftr hsipen rgtiu,n gbw,e hw. eThneh tneh teYh ueic piec’ eibk br odrokakneeced aton da pthpane adws teh ea lnweishm araleelt sus rpeniteruidrtsn..e Idn. the dance they summoned the south wind because when the wind moved from north to Donati apparently believed that his souDtho niat tmi aepapnatr ethnetl yc obmelienvge do ft hsaptr hinisg, when the ice broke SouthS Wouitnhd W minads km wasakt cwhaetdch heidm him and the whales returned. work.w Iot rsku. rIpt rsiusrepdr ihseimd ,h iwmh, ewnh heen he visited younger painters’ studios in vDiosintaetdi yapopuanrgeenrt lpya ibnetleiresv’e sdt uthdaiot sh ins Brooklyn, to see nothing but canvas BSorouothk lWynin, dto m seaes kn owtahticnhge bdu ht icmanvas and panindt ,p asion td, isfofe driefnfet rfernotm fr othme the work.S Iutr sreuarlpisrtiss’e sdt uhdiimos, ,w whheicnh h weere like Surrealists’ studios, which were like visitewd uynoduenrkgaemr mpaeirn, tweritsh’ fsotussdiliso sa nidn wunderkammer, with fossils and Brookrolycnk,s ,t oan sde etr inboatl hairntsg— b“uot bcjaenctvsa osf raoncdk psi,an iasnnptdi,r satortii obdnai,fl”f a earste sDn—to fn“raotbmi jce atchlltesd o tfhem. iSnusrprier“aaIlttii’sost nsn’,o” st tasusod Dmioousnc, haw taih bciocauhllt e wtdhe etr hwee almiyk .ethat w“Iut’nsd ntehoretk asormt imstseu rcl,o hwo kaibethdo ufaot sthsieel s mw aaansydk st,h baut t rthoec kasra,t ibasontsud t l totrhoiebk awelda a yar tsh t—eh em“ moasbakjssek clsot,so bkouefdt at ianbsopuitrt ahttheie op nwa,i”na tyain st ghDse,o ”m nEaaltsliik sc ssa alloyleosd.k ethde amt . the paintings,” Ellis says. “It’s nMoitr sóo’s mTêutceh e ta obiosueat uth, ec owncaeyi vtheda tin the artists looked at the masks, but Miró’1s9 T8ê1t,e a nedt ooinsee aouf ,t hceo nlacregievset d in Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New abouts tchuelp wtuaryes t ihne t hmea sshkosw l,o roekstesd o ant two York/ADAGP, Paris 1981, and one of the largest Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New the parionutginhg ws,o”o Edellni sb lsoacykss.. A dry Joan Miró: Tête et oiseau, 1981; click to sculptures in the show, rests on two York/ADenlarAGP,ge Paris pumpkin shell with a long, bent rough wooden blocks. A dry Joan Miró: Tête et oiseau, 1981; click to Miró’nso Tseê,t ea nedt noois oetahue,r cfoacnicael ifveeatdu riens, enlarge pumpkin shell with a long, bent 1981, and one of the largest Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/sncouslep, taunreds n ion oththe esrh foawci,a rle fsetsa tounre tsw, o York/ADAGP, Paris 3/6 rough wooden blocks. A dry Joan Miró: Tête et oiseau, 1981; click to https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/ enlarge 3/6 pumpkin shell with a long, bent nose, and no other facial features, https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/ 3/6 5/11/2020 The Surrealists' Dance with the Yup'ik Mask | Gini Alhadeff | The New York Review of Books her eighties, told me she saw the kindly woman who took care of her infirm husband: “I feel as though I were on a raft being pursued by a crocodile and that I must throw bits of food at it so it won’t eat me.” She was appeasing a dangerous beast. The Yup’ik danced as an offering and an entreaty to the animals they would hunt.

 

Donald Ellis Gallery Yup'ik South Wind or Complex Mask, from the village of Napaskiak, Kuskokwim River region, Alaska, 1890–1905

One of those very masks was the South Wind or Complex Mask, of which Ellis said:

Miró’s Tête et oiseau, conceived in

5/11/2020 The Surrealists' Dance with the Yup'ik Mask | Gini Alhadeff | The New York Review of Books affixed to a tall wooden plank, is a mask-like presence. Max Ernst’s bronze sculpture Petit Génie de la Bastille (1961) is a little black figure with outstretched fin-like arms, the top of the head squared like a paper bag turned upside down. The mouth is set in a pout. Ernst’s painting Une Oreille Prêtée (1935) is one the painter George Condo must have seen, at least in a dream. It is a flesh-and-caramel-colored flying composition (an ear, perhaps, as the title suggests), with something resembling a bird’s head embedded in it. It hangs next to a droll late- nineteenth-century mask with a bent protruding beak. But the most assertive mask has two foot-long stick-like arms proceeding diagonally from its chin and a pole rising from its forehead ending in a bird’s head with a feather on its crest. Some Mirós, such as Personnage or Femme en révolte (1938), a large gouache and charcoal on paper, just look perfect in the mix—the expressive pumpkin face is in keeping with the Yup’ik style though only in a subterranean way.

Successió Miró/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York/ADAGP, Paris Leonora Carrington/Artists Rights Society (ARS), New Joan Miró: Sans titre (Personnage or Femme en révolte), York 1938 Leonora Carrington: Composition (Ur of the Chaldees), 1950; click to enlarge

In a disquieting picture by Leonora Carrington, Composition, Ur of the Chaldees (1950), slender black figurines topple down from a golden moon into a coppery cracked abyss where large white, red, and black creatures, including a sphinx-like figure with a large eye in profile, appear to await them. Most of Carrington’s paintings of this period and just after appeared in a 1947 show organized by Edward James (builder of Las Posas, a garden of concrete follies in Xilitla, Mexico) at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, and have rarely been seen since. (Carrington had lived with Ernst for three years in the late 1930s in Saint-Martin-d’Ardèche, before he was imprisoned as a “hostile alien” and she had a nervous breakdown and was committed to an insane asylum, of which she wrote an admirable account in Down Below.)

Another of Ernst’s sculptures—a tall column of burnished bronze with a moon face and googly-eyes—reigns over all. But off to the side are two extraordinary black-and-white photographs taken by Kati Horna, one from the series Oda a la necrofilia (1962), the other a portrait of Remedios Varo, a Surrealist who was originally from Spain, wearing a shrew- snouted, wild-eyed mask made by Leonora Carrington. The three artists were great friends in Mexico City. Nearby in a glass case is a sticklike wooden figure by Carrington, Lepidóptero (circa 1952), that seems to have just landed from a 1950s science-fiction outer space. This is the moon dancer, the Surrealist soul incarnated in a mask figure.

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In a disquieting picture by Leonora Carrington, Composition, Ur of the Chaldees (1950), slender black figurines topple down from a golden moon into a coppery cracked abyss where large white, red, and black creatures, including a sphinx-like figure with a large eye in profile, appear to await them. Most of Carrington’s paintings of this period and just after appeared in a The19 4New7 s Yorkhow Review, orga p.10nized by Edward James (builder of Las Posas, a garden of concrete follies in Xilitla, Mexico) at the Pierre Matisse Gallery in New York, and have rarely been seen since. (Carrington had lived with Ernst for three years in the late 1930s in Saint-Martin-d’Ardèche, before he was imprisoned as a “hostile alien” and she had a nervous breakdown and was committed to an insane asylum, of which she wrote an admirable account in Down Below.)

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/ 4/6 The New York Review, p.11

5/11/2020 The Surrealists' Dance with the Yup'ik Mask | Gini Alhadeff | The New York Review of Books A bright yellow, red, and black Alexander Calder painting of a face has eyes that spiral into a nose. According to Emmanuel Di Donna, André Masson lived in Calder’s studio for a time when he came to the US as a refugee during World War II. The Painted Mask by Man Ray (1950s), with dark brown shadows on its heavy lids and lips tinted pink, has a dark triangle on its forehead, just like that on the Mask of a Valley Ptarmigan nearby. Kati Horna Estate Kati Horna: Untitled (Portrait of Remedios Varo wearing a Mask by Leonora Carrington), 1957 A smaller and more delicate wooden mask with a stunned look, the perfect oval of its face surrounded by eight feathers, was once in the collection of André Breton. Next to it is Breton’s Madame… Poème-objet (1937), an assemblage with a sinewy white furry animal no longer than an index finger descending into the composition above three little metal stars. “Quelle tempête cette nuit,” Breton wrote next to it. “Small, apparently insignificant creatures could act as helping spirits,” according to one Yup’ik, Mary Mike. Breton believed in the superiority of animals and “invisible beings,” such as spirits, and in the power of objects over humans.

An earlier version of this essay misidentified Remedios Varo as a Mexican Surrealist; she arrived in Mexico in 1941, and while she remained in Mexico until she died in 1963, she never became a Mexican citizen.

“Moon Dancers: Yup’ik Masks and the Surrealists” John Bigelow Taylor/Donald Ellis Gallery is at the Di Donna Galleries Yup’ik mask that once belonged to André Breton, from through June 29. the Kuskokwim River region, Alaska, late nineteenth to early twentieth century

June 3, 2018, 7:00 am

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/ 5/6 5/11/2020 The Surrealists' Dance with the Yup'ik Mask | Gini Alhadeff | The New York Review of Books A bright yellow, red, and black Alexander Calder painting of a face has eyes that spiral into a nose. According to Emmanuel Di Donna, André Masson lived in Calder’s studio for a time when he came to the US as a refugee during World War II. The Painted Mask by Man Ray (1950s), with dark brown shadows on its heavy lids and lips tinted pink, has a dark triangle on its forehead, just like that on the Mask of a Valley Ptarmigan nearby. Kati Horna Estate Kati Horna: Untitled (Portrait of Remedios Varo wearing a Mask by Leonora Carrington), 1957 A smaller and more delicate wooden mask with a stunned look, the perfect oval of its face surrounded by eight feathers, was once in the collection of André Breton. Next to it is Breton’s Madame… Poème-objet (1937), an assemblage with a sinewy white furry animal no longer than an index finger descending into the composition above three little metal stars. “Quelle tempête cette nuit,” Breton wrote next to it. “Small, apparently insignificant creatures could act as helping spirits,” according to The New York Review, p.12 one Yup’ik, Mary Mike. Breton believed in the superiority of animals and “invisible beings,” such as spirits, and in the power of objects over humans.

June 3, 2018, 7:00 am

https://www.nybooks.com/daily/2018/06/03/the-surrealists-dance-with-the-yupik-mask/ 5/6